Old timers, was it really better before technology?

That’s a fact on learning to back up quickly when you didn’t have power steering. I’m a perfect example of this.

 

There is only a few of us left that truck the same as we did in the 80’s.. I plan to finish my career in the same manor I started. I quite often think about the days of having to stop & make check calls or having to hang around the trucker’s lounge waiting for the page from the fuel desk because a buyer was calling me to give me the info on my next load or going to the fuel desk asking if I had any messages after going horizontal in the bunk for a few hours…Driver’s lounge was interesting place heard a lot of interesting stores .. I’ve posted this before but the wall in the hallway lined with pay phones or sitting in a booth with the phone on the table like @wore out said everybody in hearing range knew your buz .. I remember being in the #### hole Truck stop in El Dorado, Kansas and going through the chain of having to make 4 or 5 calls to find out I needed to be headed 600 miles east ASAP because of a family emergency .and I had just loaded at the pens going the opposite direction .. My point is I sometimes I get irritated have’n a cell ph and I do kinda sorta miss the pay phones but a cell ph has improved greatly on the Communication Just like you said that is a double edge sword

 

Hendrickson walking beam suspension...number one cause of early retirement

 

Back in the late 90’s, there was this young buck who had his truck in the shop, the dispatcher told him to deliver his load in an old Freightliner day cab with a screaming 8v71(318) 10 speed with no power steering, no A/C and so on, this young buck said “Heck No, its unsafe”, I looked at him and at the dispatcher and said,…… “I’ll do it”, even though I couldn’t cuz I wasn’t a company driver. But for me to drive an old truck like that would have brought back many memories on how good we had it back then. The new generation wouldn’t touch anything like that.

 

Mack's camelback also. Spent many years driving the R models and the 5 sp trans

 

I remember an old K100 my grandfather had when I was a kid had no brakes on steer axle. I took my driving test at 18 in that old KW.

 

Do any warehouses still use small wood?
I hated Nash Finch because every load had to be shipped on standard skids but put on small pallets.
Does anyone use slip sheets anymore?
Been a few decades since I hauled freight.

 

How about standing at the fuel desk and giving a comcheck # cause that’s how you paid for things, or standing there and they ask you what date would you like on your fuel receipt and having to take a moment to think which log book you were fix’n to show or ( not show) you fueled .. Oh the magical things you could do with a log book

 

No power steering learned us to have the tires turned exactly where we needed them before they quit rolling. Seen one of those sayings things on falsebook a while back, meme I think they are called…. Said, if your truck has manual steering you didn’t have a subscription to the gym.., or something like that lol…

 

3 words….. CENTER…… POINT…. STEERING